


les chants de maldoror

by waynebruce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, film critic rose interviews sbahj director dave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24708589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waynebruce/pseuds/waynebruce
Summary: To avid followers of the blog, my pursuit of a Dave Strider interview should by now be fairly well known, but a brief recap for those brought to this website by the redolent promise of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: The Movle [sic.] content: the past few months leading up to the film’s cinematic release have consisted mostly of me employing my best quality (blunt-force stubbornness) and beating my head against his self-imposed press blackout until something gave.However, a fortuitous development - after months of constant barrage by way of email, it seems I’ve finally worn him down.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	les chants de maldoror

To avid followers of the blog, my pursuit of a Dave Strider interview should by now be fairly well known, but a brief recap for those brought to this website by the redolent promise of _Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: The Movle_ [sic.] content: the past few months leading up to the film’s cinematic release have consisted mostly of me employing my best quality (blunt-force stubbornness) and beating my head against his self-imposed press blackout until something gave.

However, a fortuitous development - after months of constant barrage by way of email, it seems I’ve finally worn him down. His response: a two-line email agreeing to meet me for lunch at an Uptown jazz club. Said jazz club, owned by Strider himself, shall at his behest here remain nameless; but to the die-hard fan is fairly easily located, given that it possesses the obvious hallmarks of any Striderian creation. (The sign outside is nigh-unreadable.)

He is not the figure of Herculean stoicism that some have made him out to be. Tall and thin and startlingly pale for a Texas native, he rambles; a tendency seemingly exacerbated by his somewhat agoraphobic disposition. He doesn’t like being out in public, he says, and is quick to duck into the dark club, seemingly uncaring as to whether or not I choose to follow.

I choose to follow, of course. For those among you who have suffered severe head trauma and thus been in a coma for the past five years, Hollywood wunderkind Dave Strider is the writer/director of _Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: the Moive_ [sic.], 2015’s critically acclaimed head-fuck starring Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller. Following his rise to fame, Strider deftly avoided the press junkets demanded of other directors of his caliber (insofar as they exist; the hype surrounding his movies is a unique and startling phenomenon) - this interview is one of only three he has ever agreed to give. 

I’ve come armed with an open mind and list of questions I know he, for the most part, will point-blank refuse to answer. Needless to say, I am very fucking excited.  
  


Our first topic of discussion is breached as we wait for our lunch orders to arrive. This topic - one that makes him visibly uncomfortable - is that of the upcoming release of his new film, _Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: The Movle_. _The Movle_ is not the light-operatic creative experiment of _Sweet Bros_ and _Hella Jeffs_ past - rebellion is Strider’s thematic compass, touched upon time and time again like a child’s threadbare security blanket. He mimics in order to reject, an exercise in careful subversion. The symbolism is double-edged and cuts deep.

I ask him about his inspirations. He is predictably reticent, but eventually names several documentaries recently produced by the budding Earth-bound troll community. These documentaries - whose names, for the sake of brevity, I am choosing to exclude here - are cautionary tales, meditating on the ramifications of a slowly tightening media stranglehold. Topical, considering the situation in which we currently find ourselves. Also, I remark, dangerously illegal. He does not seem bothered by this.

“I don’t make serious movies,” he says. “That’s why I fucking hate when people ask me to explain what they mean. I know people have their own theories, but _The Movle -_ it’s not, like, some coded cultural commentary or an elaborate fuck-you to the Condesce. I’m just trying to make people laugh.”

I bring up a few particularly inflammatory lines of dialogue from the film. One in particular, delivered by Ben Stiller at the movie’s thirty-minute mark, borrows verbiage near-verbatim from _The Communist Manifesto -_ “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” says Sweet Bro, tumbling, Chaplain-esque, down a flight of stairs. “Patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, fight, that each time ended either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

“Ben ad-libbed that,” Strider says.   
  


Even after watching the film, it’s unclear whether _The Movle_ is meant to be a true sequel to _the Moive_ , as Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff are transformed in every manner but name. Stiller and Wilson imbue their characters with a kind of world-weary exhaustion; their relationship, once a source of easy, if confusing, humor, has become a prison of mutual annihilation, a black hole that they seemingly cannot help but orbit. Strider treads a minefield of loaded political and sexual double entendre with his script, jumping back and forth from the typo-ridden language of the first movie to a new, almost Homeric style of writing. To give credit where credit is due, Stiller and Wilson carry this weight well, and a few moments of genuine humor shine through the film’s tapestry of revolutionary tragedy and futility. 

This tonal shift, Strider says, is an intentional choice, but not one meant to do anything besides entertain. I ask him if it is at all related to the recently ratified 28th amendment regarding censorship of speech. His response: “Let’s talk about literally anything that isn’t that.”

Fair enough - I move on. Does he have anything to say about Guy Fieri, recently elected Supreme Court Justice and virulent critic of the _Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff_ series? 

“Once a project is out in the world, I can’t control how people react,” says Strider. “If he wants to hate on them, fine. A lot of people hate my movies. _I_ kind of hate my movies. You can’t give a fuck about every single thing that gets said about you, or you’ll go fucking crazy.”

Remarkable sagacity from the creator of one of the most widely-loved film series in recent memory. (For context: _The Movle_ went on to make $700 million opening weekend. _the Moive_ made $500 million.)  
  


As some of you may know, I am prone to bouts of somewhat unnecessarily melodramatic reflection - and as the interview comes to its inevitable close, I fall prey to a particularly intemperate instance of this. Here, finishing the end of a glass of Coke, staring a touch vacantly out the window, waiting for a hamburger that doesn’t seem to be coming, Dave Strider seems like the twenty-something he is. He is a once-in-a-century creative with his finger pressed to the pulse of the revolution, yes - but he is also a young man doing his best to bear the heavy mantle of fame under intense scrutiny, that dark twin that inevitably follows celebrity.

We are living in strange times. Whatever the intention behind _Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff: The Movle,_ it’s a breath of fresh air. Yes, it’s still unclear whether the weight of truth in an era of stifling censorship is something Dave Strider has actively _chosen_ to bear - that may just be a hopeful projection on my part. But alas, a silent Atlas, he bears it nonetheless. 

To quote _The Movle_ ’s closing line, delivered by a tearful Hella Jeff clinging desperately to a dying Sweet Bro - “We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world to win.” 

It’s a good movie. Go see it.

**Author's Note:**

> that sound youre hearing right now is karl marx rolling in his fucking grave lmao


End file.
